


Empty

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror, Dubious Morality, Forced Pregnancy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Memory Alteration, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 02:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Clary doesn't escape from Iris Rouse's basement in time. Magnus helps her deal with the aftermath.





	Empty

She wakes up on clean sheets in a room she doesn’t recognize, the covers tucked down tightly around her instead of all kicked apart like she usually leaves them. The sun is coming in through half-shut blinds and everything around her seems quiet and still. There’s an echo of something, bitterness on her tongue, the fading hint of a nightmare, but then she blinks and it’s gone. Her mouth tastes morning-sour. Her head feels—

(_empty_)

—strangely fragile. It’s only when she sits up slowly that she becomes aware that the rest of her body aches as well. When she lifts her hands, there are bruised bands around her wrists, but most of the pain is centered in her abdomen, a cramping ache like period pains but so much worse. When she presses her palms there, her belly feels weird. Soft and stretched and tender. There’s a bulky pad between her legs, unnaturally cool against her flesh and squishing when she moves, and that hurts, too.

Somehow, it’s not until the door swings open slightly that it occurs to her to be afraid. Her head jerks up, and the man framed in the doorway pauses, frozen in the act of lifting his hand as if to knock. For a moment it’s like staring at a perfect stranger, and then she shakes her head and— “Magnus.”

Of course it’s Magnus. She knows him. How could she have forgotten?

Magnus takes a breath and smiles. There’s something uncharacteristically tremulous about it. “Biscuit. How are you feeling?”

“Um,” Clary says. “Confused. The last thing I remember is…”

_Alec’s wary face and the tall brick house and a beautiful redheaded warlock woman with a gentle smile, and—_

_—skittering in the darkness—_

“Clary?” Magnus says again. He’s closer now, paused next to her bed. A flicker of blue magic dances over his fingers. “What do you remember?”

“I don’t—” Clary breaks off. Her heartbeat is rising, she can feel it, her breath coming short and panicky, because she does remember, she _does_, she remembers the dark cell and the demon and what happened after, Iris Rouse’s smile and the horrible twisting squirming_ thing _expanding inside her and this very bed, this very ceiling, the world washed with pain and screaming, _Get it out, get it out, get it _out_—_

Magic sparks against her skull. She jerks away, and Magnus holds his hands up apologetically. His eyes look wet for a moment, but then he blinks and the impression is gone. “I’m sorry. Sometimes, with strong emotions, the spell doesn’t take the first time.”

“Get it out,” Clary whispers, because she knows, she knows, she _knows_, and she _cannot_ remember this. She can’t. Not and keep any bit of her sanity. “Please.”

“I will,” Magnus says, “I promise,” and this time when his magic-wreathed fingers land on her temples, she doesn’t flinch away. Magic stings her skull, then sifts _through_ her, pulling her thoughts apart and she remembers—

—_the toothless grizzled stranger pulling the bloody knife from her hands, his breath that smelled like whiskey and rot and the kindness in his voice, “Sweetheart, honey, what are you doing, what are you doing? Somebody call an ambulance—”_

_“I have to get it out, I have to, let go of me,” and the blood slicking her fingers, the roiling pain in her abdomen and worst of all something still _moving_ beneath it—_

_“—should call someone with more expertise,” Magnus is saying. His face is a calm mask and his hands are folded and he hasn’t touched her, hasn’t reached out for her the way Luke did, the way Jace and Izzy and Simon did, the way even Alec did before she screamed at them to get out, get out, get the _fuck_ out. It’s the only reason she hasn’t run screaming into the night. That calm. “Catarina Loss knows more about…”_

_“I don’t want another fucking warlock, Magnus. I just want to know if you can kill it.”_

_He closes his eyes. She remembers distantly what he told her about his mother; she knows that he’s heard how they found her with a bloody knife in her hands. His face is still calm, though. “No. Not without killing you.” _

Then kill me_, she thinks, but she knows he won’t. _

_“Fine then. Fine. I don’t want to remember. When it’s over, I want you to take my memories of—this. All of it.” Magnus starts to speak. She can see the negation in his face, hear the beginnings of a refusal on his tongue, and she adds, “You took half of my childhood. You can take this, too.”_

_She leans forward over her swollen belly. It’s expanding fast. She doesn’t know much about pregnancy, but she’s pretty sure it’s happening too fast. The thing inside her is growing too fast, and she can feel its joints every time it moves, dragging and twisting against the inside of her body. It reminds her, horribly, of that room in the basement of Iris Rouse’s house, the skittering monster crouched over her, its eyeless face and fetid breath._

_Magnus gives her a long look. “Taking a block of memory like that could permanently damage your mind.”_

_“I don’t care. I want it gone. All of it, I want it gone.”_

_He sighs, and looks down, and finally nods. "Okay."_

*

She wakes up on clean sheets in a room she doesn’t recognize, the covers tucked down tightly around her. The sun is coming in through half-shut blinds. Everything around her seems quiet and still.

A stranger sits beside her bed, watching her with eyes that are dark and sad.


End file.
